Wednesday, 7 May 2008

Calories to lose weight

Cutting down calories to lose weight

It’s a familiar question but one asked often by a variety of people. ‘What do I have to cut in calories to lose weight?’In short there is no unique answer as every individual person burns a unique amount of calories on a daily basis, calories that are vital for the healthy maintenance of the body.Without calories there would be no energy and without energy vital organs would stop functioning.

Assessing how many calories it takes to maintain this natural cycle is a crucial step towards understanding how many calories we need to cut from our diet so that we can lose weight.The difficulty in assessing our calorie intake versus our calorie usage often lies in poor education and misconception of the foods we eat in relation to what we need to eat.

A very simple way to understand our current weight versus our ideal weight can be seen in the following chart.

Weight in pounds

This is as simple as it gets. Anyone in the blue zone is classed as being underweight. Anyone in the white zone is at an ideal weight. The red zone depicts people who are overweight according to their height and their weight.

So what is the next step once we are armed with this crucial piece of information?

Once we have assessed our closest related zone and we have come to terms with the weight we are we can now move towards taking some decisive actions to overcome our weight problems.Even at this stage it is important to remember not to do things too quickly as accelerated weight loss in a very unhealthy process and can lead to complicated health issues.

As a rule of thumb the average man needs 2500 calories per day to function in a healthy way. Women need slightly less and come in at 2000 calories per day. These figures are based on the average lifestyle and do not include any excessive exercise etc.

This isn’t rocket science but the amount of people who don’t get this concept is unbelievable. To lose weight we have to change our ways.This means one of two things or in some cases both.

Losing weight means less calorie intake or more calorie expenditure.

Cutting your calories to lose weight may be the easier option if you are excessively overweight as you may find it difficult to motivate yourself into doing any exercise whilst you are carrying all that excessive baggage.You can always start with simple exercises from home that are easy to perform and do not require excessive demand on your body.We have referenced some of these exercises in previous posts so take your pick and get involved. If you make these exercises part of your daily routine then you’ll soon feel the benefits.

For those of you who feel that you can take on a more active programme for losing weight then you can start a much more excessive exercise programme. This means that you continue with your current calorie intake as the exercise will counterbalance the calories and you will start to use more than the 2500/2000 calories you need in the day.